Cowrywise is a successful wealth management startup in Nigeria. They are leveraging technology and investment management to re-imagine how personal finance services are delivered to people. It is unknown exactly what is stopping people from making investments or creating a new plan after Sign up. I was tasked with discovering the cause of the drop off and also creating an experience to increase customer retention and user conversion.
In conducting a heuristic evaluation, these are the three most critical areas of opportunity that the app had in improving it's user experience.
#INSIGHT 1 - Add money prompts the users to top up there savings or investment even for new users who do not have a plan.
#INSIGHT 2 - There are few opportunities to get the user started in investing or saving as the available plans are below the fold.
To generate insights on how people currently make investments and save their money and to better understand our user’s pain point while signing up on Cowrywise, I conducted usability testing where users were asked to sign up and to understand the reason for the drop offs. The interview gave rich qualitative data.
Majority of my users struggled with the first task to carry out after sign up.
Majority of my users didn't have enough financial knowledge.
HOW MIGHT WE MAKE COWRYWISE SIMPLE AND UNDERSTANDABLE TO INCREASE USER CONVERSION AND RETENTION?
The Hypothesis for the expected solution was to highlight education all through the App to help users understand the app better, because more educated users will be more successful investors/savers, thereby driving more interest and ultimately higher sign up rates.
#APPROACH 1: HOMEPAGE VARIATIONS FOR NEW USERS
To convert new users quickly, create a before and after conversion dashboard, with the former presenting them with plans on first contact with the homepage and after conversion access to their balance.
#APPROACH 2: LEARN FEATURE
A learn feature providing users regardless of their experience all information necessary to make wise financial decisions and avoid them getting stuck because they were confused about the next step to take while navigating the App.
During my brainstorming session , I explored several concepts in the context of the existing design and finally decided on two variants which usability testing was conducted on for initial response.
These are the key insights after after conducting usability testing with four different users;
"Users found the financial education banner helpful
" Users had difficulty identifying the learn feature on the navigation.
To align with our user’s expectations and the business goals, I redesigned and expanded upon the original idea moving away from the existing experience Cowrywise currently has. I moved the design to high fidelity and carried out two rounds of usability testing with four users each, I got some insightful responses.
Moving from the existing experience, two homepage variations were created. The first highlighting education and the second the users balance after they've created either a savings plan or an investment plan.
Moving from the existing experience where we initially had the learn feature as a banner on the homepage. I decided to trade off the action menu as the information there can be found under plans and then add the learn to the navigation menu to highlight education all through the App.
Improved on the mutual fund and challenge experience, incorporating user education to make it easy and understandable.
It was challenging to find a way to present the experience to satisfy both users' wants ( helping them make a decision) and stakeholders' wants ( wanting users to create an investment/saving plan ).
75%
of users that tested the prototype, said it will save them a lot of time in getting to understand how the App worked.
50%
of users that tested the prototype, first call to action was to make an investment.
50%
of users that tested the prototype, found the transition unique and friendly.
One thing unique about this angle is that education is something that me as well as the rest of Robinhood is really passionate about and it's really cool to see you thinking about it. One thing you did very well was think about the different states and the things that could happen.
( Eileen Dai - Product Designer at Robinhood)
It was like you spoke to me because we're totally exploring education everyday at Robinhood. You gave such a clean presentation and good story telling, so much professionalism to the work.
( Carolyn Kao - Product Designer at Robinhood)
I love that you really tied in your research and really made the education entry point really seem fun. The copy writing "Learn and Grow" was really spot on and for someone who is really curious and is looking for ease of use and that guidance, that's a really strong approach.
( Tobi Oluwo - Product Designer at Robinhood)
One key learning for me was coming to the realization that UX writing is about achieving understanding. Ultimately, a clear and consistent message will help with respect to inclusivity and ensure that a wide range of audiences are able to understand and extract value from your message.
Next steps will be to explore other directions to make the article page more scannable so it is easily digestable, because a lot of users on Apps have trouble reading because peoples attention span are so short these days.
